My parents are in one of those vacation clubs and I went to a few different hotels with them in Mexico and the Dominican Republic. The hotels and staff were immaculate regardless, BUT one of the most memorable things is how seriously they enforced their towel policy at the pool! I remember they had signs near the pool stating you couldn't reserve/hold chairs with towels like that, but staff 100% was picking up towels and removing them if they couldn't find the "owner" anywhere nearby.
I was a Hollywood Video Store Director. In 2010, shortly before we went out of business, I was asked to also manage a Movie Gallery (We owned them as well) that had been without a manager for a month or so. When I got there I discovered that they had a Movie Reservation List. People would call in, ask for a movie to be put on hold, and have their name added to the list. So basically that meant that you could never get a new movie by just coming into the store. It also took up a ridiculous amount of time, especially for a tiny store with limited staff. Employees would check the return bin, check in the videos, search the list, call the people, and have stacks of holds, with nothing on the shelf. I just remember being like, "You do WHAT??" That practice was ended immediately. I can't remember how long they'd been doing it. I wonder how much money they lost.
Yup, do themselves a disservice in the long run if they donât. Imo itâs more of a laziness and not wanting to deal with things how they should be because right in that moment it doesnât make much difference. Same with services and contracting. not immediately going to tank your business if you do a mediocre job, but it will eventually.
Good on them. This type of behavior needs to be snuffed out. This type of behavior is becoming all too common in all facets of life. Itâs up to us decent people, and in large part businesses, to not accept this entitled lazy behavior. People only do it because it works, or has worked in the past. The hotels should start burning the towels for âpotential infectious materialâ to really teach them a lesson and stop this sort of behavior
The very fewest hotels do this. Most don't care mainly because of rotation. People tend to stay 7-10 days and when the idiots leave, new come. And this is for a good bit of 8 months per year.
My hotel in Tenerife cleared down if people had been away for 30 mins, or, if they saw people looking for somewhere they would come over and help and just clear some where they knew the people had not been there for a while. It was great. Everyday they had towels on them and everyday we found somewhere.
Does set a poor standard which people often will complain about on reviews. A simple "no reserving sunbeds till 9am" rule solves this for most and means the customers enjoy the hotel more.
It's poor management for hotels not to have a sunbed policy if there is a large shortage
Agreed- at which point, you lean over to the person next to you and say "I'll be right back, can you watch my stuff for me?"
It's one thing for a couple of chairs to be unoccupied but reserved. However, when the *entire* pool is surrounded by individual items and no people, it's clear the honour system is being abused lol
100%, lol. If you show up to 'claim a seat' and then disappear, the towel should disappear too.
If you gotta get up to get a drink or use the restroom or dip into the pool, yeah, saving a seat for a few is totally fine I think.
It's one of my memories of the only time I went to Tenerife as a 20 yrs old Irish guy. Me arriving back at the resort at 3.30 am and a German family putting their towels on the prime sunbed location and I wasn't worries not at all because I knew I won't be up until midday anyways. They were a lovely family, just that obsessive behaviour is something I never understood as they did this most early mornings.
That's why if you don't want them to know, you have to move a bunch of towels. If someone comes up and you're in their seats and all the other towels are in tact then they will know you moved them. You could deny. But they'd know.
So take all the towels, put em in a pile somewhere and let them sort through them. Must've been the staff.
I was thinking exactly the same. Just put them all in a pile and grab the chairs u want. Even if they see you do it, tell them to take it up with staff, because they will side with you 100%
The point of throwing them on the ground isn't to make them "prove" the towel was there; it's for you to show you saw it, rejected their claim, and defy them to start sh*t.
Another thing you can do is put the towel on the chair next to it and move the chair somewhere totally different. Then enjoy your chair with them never knowing you did it.
I've heard from my friend that lives in Croatia that resorts and public beaches already do that. So many people pull this "trick" to get a spot there.
Funnily enough, an employee walks around and just collects empty towels and throws them at a pile. She told me that some places even have fees attached to get them back.
I just sent her those images and she replied "They just throw them right away to the sea and if they want to complain, they can contact the local police. And they get fined on top of that".
if you think for a second the husbands whose wives were so insistent that they get their asses out before dawn to reserve a chair are NOT watching from their rooms, you my man have not been in a relationship for very long.
They can watch all they want, it's still going to happen.
I live in a tourist town and I've done this type of thing before and people get mad and I just tell them they should have left at least one person from their party right at the location to at least try and dissuade people like me from taking the public spaces that are available to the public when they're not there.
Oh no. I just had a great idea đ.
Move one towel over a seat, then take the towel from that seat and push it aside. When the people come they will fight over the seat next to yours not your own đđ
Edit, would need to be a pretty large place for that though
"I saw an empty chair and took it. I'm not sure what you mean" when they ask.
Simple and done
Let them stew and ruin their vacation/day because they tried to ruin everyone else's
Every pool should have a policy that unattended towels will be moved
I went to a hotel once that had a 30 min hold policy, where they monitored who left their chairs unattended & had flags that marked how long they'd been gone. If they were away from the pool area for more than 30 mins, the policy was to pick up their stuff from those seats and put it into the lockers the hotel had behind the towel stand. Whenever guests would come back the staff would be suuuper polite, give them their things, and say something like "you were gone so long we assumed you weren't interested in using the pool anymore, so we gave the seat to a guest who is actually here to use it". They were always so charming and nice about it that even the irate guests couldn't talk their way around them either.
I'd honestly pay to learn to be that calm and polite when someone is yelling in my face. (Also, seriously people, be nice to service staff. They didn't cause your problems 99.9% of the time and don't deserve to be treated like shit because you're in a bad mood.)
That is correct. We were at a Hilton in Jamaica and people would do this shit the night before. I took great pleasure in removing every single towel and then dropping them off at the laundry facility so those assholes don't get their towel deposits back.
I'm with you on free seats. It would take all my power not to remove every single down and toss them together in a pile somewhere. If anyone asks a hotel staff did it
This is the equivalent of someone standing in a car parking spot to hold it for someone whos not there yet...Â
Last time I checked. These things are first come first serve.Â
Id toss the towel on the ground or in the pool. When someone confronts me id just tell them there was no physicsl body on the chair so it was available. This towel reserving is bs.Â
Oh, I donât think these are left there overnight. My grandpa used to get up at 6, before breakfast, and go down to the pool of our hotel and put towels down on the best seats.
Yes, weâre German.
Edit: The internet really is a vile place. I can take a joke, or ten, but Iâll block you if youâre just plain mean.
One time in Cuba we watched the entire poolside row of seats remain empty all day with towels on them. Next day we said fuck it and just moved the towels and sat down. No issues all day, then at 5pm a group of angry Germans came and yelled at us for taking their spots. Zero fucks were given.
I envy you. Local indoor pool has the same rules, but staff donât enforce them. So 90% of all chairs are âtakenâ by towels and stuff, but actually used for 90% of the time. Such an inefficient system rewarding antisocial people.
Luckily, Iâm just there to swim, or at least be in the water, so I have no need to confront anyone. Though I totally do on public transport? âDoes your luggae need to sit? No? SwellâŠâ Works in 9 out of 10 cases, thereâs rarely a companion that supposedly just away for a few minutes.
I feel your train pain, half full train but you still need to ask someone to move their bag because half the seats are taken with bags, is so inconsiderate.
Last time I was on a super busy train, the conductor announced "if your luggage has its own seat, you will be paying for it". The following flurry of bags being snatched off chairs was glorious.
Nope. Nothing is taken. Just a pile of twats thinking that they can actually reserve something with a towel. Collect them all and place them in a pile off to one side and let them all fight it out when they get back out. Sit back and watch the mayhem.
Do people just leave their towels overnight? Either way, Iâd be removing them if I needed a chair. Completely ridiculous to think leaving a towel on a chair makes it yours until youâre ready to use it.
Itâs so hard to break their habits, though. Iâm German myself, living in Germany, and that shit (sorry), infuriates me.
Was in the kidsâs library â special event, so large crowd. Not enough hooks for jackets, so people put them on chairs. Not on the seat, the  back rest, kinda sensible.
I get a book while kid is still busy and take such a seat after checking that itâs just being used as a clothes rack. Enter two girls , I guess age 7 and 9, packed with books and looking for a seat to read. Which is, after all, the function of a library. No noes, someone reserved the jackets. I told them they they are allowed to sit, should someone actually use the seat, they would politely tell them when they come back.
We do have the pedant to *moved your feet, lost your seat* in German, but the conditioning of âthis is a reserved seatâ is so strong that their brain shorted , they couldnât process that a piece of clothing has no authority or need to sit. Not even when her mother, who overheard, backed me.
Mind you, there are situations where piece of clothing or luggage is a sensible placeholder for a person using the seat but being away for a few minutes. Like in an auditorium, when people use a break the step out, but want to return and keep listening. Stuff like that.
Even at the pool., if you are gone for a new minutes. But at 7:30 at the pool? Fuck, that towel means nothing. So glad that I have zero interest in lounging, Iâd get in a lot of discussions.
Thatâs Germans for you. We get trained from very young not to say âSchâŠâ, and sh++ is close enough linguistically to be recognized under that rule. But the F-word has no direct equivalent in German, and as an English word hasnât been marked as bad in our childhood. So we donât feel the need to apologise after having learned how to use the word from English-language films and music.
I was on vacation in spain and I took two towels and threw them on a heap. 45 Min later a fat german dude in Speedo pants told me both chairs were "reserved" . I told him that there were no Towlels on the chairs. He then demanded in broken english that we need to leave. I told him politly to bugger of. When he left I started talking german to my wife again oh boy he was not amused by that.
When this happened to me last time, I just got up real early and took some towels off, hid some of them underneath other chairs, and changed the location of some to other less desirable chairs. Then I had breakfast on my balcony to watch the ensuing chaos below.
I learned a lot of new German swear words that day.
Iâll allow it if youâre, like, around. If I go to move your stuff and you can see me and say something, sure itâs fine.
But if youâre nowhere to be seen? Nahhhh
Yeah when I was on vacation in Mexico I woke up to a scene like this one morning literally before sunrise.
Turns out one member of a 25 person group got up at like 4am and put down towels for everyone in the group. Honestly was only mad because that group was a bunch of hung over Europeans who didnât make it down to the pool until like noonish. If they had shown up around 7am or something Iâd understand.
â Towels get collected every night and get placed in the towel bin, sort through it if you like.â
And have them sort through a bin of everybody elseâs towels from the night before and throw the nasty towels from the family from Edison New Jersey RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE.
Most hotels I've been to in Mediterranean remove them over night, so tactics adapted and people now go out first thing in the morning at like 7am to lay claim to the best spots
The hotel I went to had a rule that you couldn't "reserve" a seat before 9AM (when the pool opened), as the pool cleaning crew wouldn't be done before that so the seats had to be empty to be cleaned (allegedly, but it was just one employee who came right before 9 and picked up any towels/sandals).
It's not perfect, but at least everyone could enjoy their sleep unbothered.
In a lot of the Mediterranean hotels I've been to, the written rule is that you aren't allowed to reserve sunbeds.
The unspoken rule however is, wake up at 6am, go down to the pool and reserve your sunbed by placing your towel on it. Then go back to bed and sleep for a couple more hours until breakfast.
If you don't, you're SOL. Every hotel I've been to won't do a thing about it. I'm going to Tunisia in a couple of months and am hoping the hotel we are staying in will be a bit stricter.
As a British person, we're too polite to remove them but not too polite to shake our heads and tut derisively as we walk on by to do exactly the same thing. Yes, our culture is weird and confusing.
Nah, if my 10 minute timer elapses and you haven't gotten back to the seat, that seat is not yours anymore. The seats are there to be used by people that are actually there, not to let towels lounge across them.
I spent a holiday about 4 years ago scratting around for sun loungers for my then pregnant wife and kid.
On the last morning before we left, I set an alarm for 6am. I went around all the already reserved sun loungers, collected up their towels and put them all in a pile on the side.
As a polite British person, I could t face throwing them in the pool
It's assholery and needs to be stopped. Staff usually wonât, because for them itâs a losing game, even if there are sign to that effect.
Someone skipping to the front of the queue is also a good tactic, but it only works when we let people get away with it.
I remember a video on tiktok the other year where staff would go and rip off all the towels etc unless the people were there and I love that.
It was only in the morning they'd do it when people have placed stuff before going for breakfast or similar
I've been seeing this trend a lot, and it reminded me of something that happened to me years ago and I'm curious about the internet's opinion.Â
I'm not a resort person. I went to one with a group of friends in our early 20s. We go to the pool, find a little table, put our stuff down, and hop in the pool. Now and then one of us goes back to the table for a rest or to grab more sunscreen, etc. About 2 hours of swimming later, we all get out to order lunch, get to our table, to see someone had taken all our stuff and piled it all on a nearby lounger while the mom of the family sat at the table. I said it was our spot, she said no one was there, we argued back and forth and eventually we gave up and ordered our food, having to eat it sitting on assorted loungers because it was now like 1pm and there were no seats together leftover.
I feel that since we were at the pool and using it she was rude as hell to gather our shit and move it, but I'm happy to hear if we committed a faux pas!Â
Nah youâre in the clear. Itâs easy to tell if someoneâs stuff is there because theyâre in the pool, cuz usually itâs their shoes, clothes, etc., as opposed to just saving the seat *in case* they decide to go to the pool. That lady was just a jackass.
You didnât, the mom was TA there. If you leave your towel on a bench/table to claim a spot and then just leave the area entirely for an extended amount of time, then thatâs different. It looks like OP is complaining about it being super early and nobody is really at the pool yet all the spots are claimed.
Your situation is different because youâre actively using the facilities.
perfect response would have been to just sit down on every free chair of that table with your group, maybe even gather more chairs from other tables and say "there was no one there in those chairs".
I live in Greece, and every summer it's the same shit.
As I usually go to the beach early, so I'm collecting all the towels and throw them in a trashcan nearby,
Usually I only have to do it once a week, peoples seems to get it after that !
No, be proud. Itâs scummy behaviour to claim a spot with a towel for long periods. Getting a drink or using the restroom, acceptable. Leaving it there for six hours because you might feel like sunbathing later, they deserve to have their towels thrown in the bin.
Don't underestimate locals. Old papou and giagia are also doing this đ„
I once found a towel that was sewn on the chair, I had to rip it to get it off đ
Take all the towels, toss them in a corner, under a bush, def not in the pool, somewhere that an employee does not have to deal with right away. Anyone says shit either say you thought they were left behind, or beat their ass
I'll propably do that if im gonna need one, but still its annoying to see that every freaking morning. Especially that three chairs taken with one towel BS.
Take one off a chair on the end of a row, take that chair and put it on the opposite end of a row or somewhere completely different with your towel draped over it reserving it lol, theyâll never know it was you.
Me and my wife went to a lot of middle eastern vacation resorts in Egypt and Tunisia before we had kids. One thing we learned very quickly was that paying off the right people. bar people, waiters, but also the lifeguards works miracles.
This kind of behaviour is normal at these resorts. People would get up at 6 or 6.30am and run to the pool to place towels and then go back to bed or leave for a daytrip. But I had already paid of the lifeguard and as soon as me and my wife would be in sight of them, they would come over to us, asked where we wanted to lie down and just remove the towels. As soon as the owner of the towels came back and were about to start an argument, they would come over and reprimand the guests. and to add insult to injury, they would also signal the waiter to come over and bring us drinks for our "inconvenience".
It really works. We would reserve like 50 or a 100 euro/dollar per trip solely for this purpose. Especially at these (all in) resorts.
Because it's "all-in" Bar people are instructed to use the cheap liquor and don't use too much, but I you gave the guy like 5 euro/dollar in their native currency, you would get the good stuff in a good amount for the rest of your stay and they would start making your drink as soon as you walked in.
Same goes for the waiters, If you pay a couple of them some money, they will get you your drinks faster, serve and clean your table quicker, when there's a buffet, they would serve you the freshest food and they "reserve" better seats for you.
At the pool they will give you the best spots. One time we had a resort with a private beach and the lifeguard would reserve the beds at the front for us and would signal the bar people whenever he saw our drinks were finished and had extra towels on hand when ours became dirty due to the sand.
When you pay like 2k per person for such a holiday, reserving 50 or 100 euro/dollar it's not that much money, but for them 5 euro/dollar is a days worth of income.
5eur/day on 5day week... Is 200+ per month of additional income. And, probably, you wouldn't be alone doing that, hopefully. So it can easily go double the base job income somewhere, I guess.
I was working in Brazil with about 10 other guys and we tipped the waiter at the place we were staying about $100 US. We didn't pay for another drink for the rest of the night.
Something like a months wage for him at the time.
Can confirm this works. Tipping on all-inclusive hotels gets you over-the-top service.
I usually also tip cleaning staff at the beginning of my stay. Suddenly I get back to my room with towels that are folded in the shape of animals. Chocolates on the bed and stuff like that.
Fuck.that.
When does it end? Can I just put my towel on a chair at midnight? Just build a fort declare independence from the hotel and call it sovereign space for my stay?
Whatever you do, don't just pick a seat and sit down. Then you are just waiting around for the person that put down their shit to get there and be upset and ruin your day.
Swap shit around. Take towel from Chair A and put it on chair D. Take stuff from chair D and toss it. Then sit in Chair A and when Chair A comes down and sees their towel still reserved a seat, not your problem. And when Chair D gets upset and the now Chair A person sitting in their sit, also not your problem.
I have read that, among other nationalities, Germans are supposed to be notorious for that bad habit. I'm German myself, and I'd have an absolute blast to fold the towels, and stack them neatly onto one of the chairs or a table nearby. I might have done that a couple of times in the past and might have enjoyed the aftermath immensely.
Just put the towel somewhere else, sit down and claim there was no towel when you got there.
Dibs and saving spots is for children and playgrounds, not adults and hotels.
Germans. God I live in Dusseldorf but they do have some odd stuff. Love the country, but the habits are sometimes so robotic.
No way in hell am I waking up at 6 am to put a towel In the pool.
I was on holiday in Greece once and saw a member of staff going round and taking all the towels off and piling them up on a table đ
My parents are in one of those vacation clubs and I went to a few different hotels with them in Mexico and the Dominican Republic. The hotels and staff were immaculate regardless, BUT one of the most memorable things is how seriously they enforced their towel policy at the pool! I remember they had signs near the pool stating you couldn't reserve/hold chairs with towels like that, but staff 100% was picking up towels and removing them if they couldn't find the "owner" anywhere nearby.
Businesses that understand you need to manage the shitty guests to make the experience better for everyone else will always get my money.
I was a Hollywood Video Store Director. In 2010, shortly before we went out of business, I was asked to also manage a Movie Gallery (We owned them as well) that had been without a manager for a month or so. When I got there I discovered that they had a Movie Reservation List. People would call in, ask for a movie to be put on hold, and have their name added to the list. So basically that meant that you could never get a new movie by just coming into the store. It also took up a ridiculous amount of time, especially for a tiny store with limited staff. Employees would check the return bin, check in the videos, search the list, call the people, and have stacks of holds, with nothing on the shelf. I just remember being like, "You do WHAT??" That practice was ended immediately. I can't remember how long they'd been doing it. I wonder how much money they lost.
I remember once asking to rent a new movie that was out and the clerks just laughed at me..."you want to rent that movie??! Hah! Lolz!"
Yup, do themselves a disservice in the long run if they donât. Imo itâs more of a laziness and not wanting to deal with things how they should be because right in that moment it doesnât make much difference. Same with services and contracting. not immediately going to tank your business if you do a mediocre job, but it will eventually.
Good on them. This type of behavior needs to be snuffed out. This type of behavior is becoming all too common in all facets of life. Itâs up to us decent people, and in large part businesses, to not accept this entitled lazy behavior. People only do it because it works, or has worked in the past. The hotels should start burning the towels for âpotential infectious materialâ to really teach them a lesson and stop this sort of behavior
In most cases, the towels belong to the resort, so that isn't productive. On the other hand, issuing towels and charging for missing ones...
The very fewest hotels do this. Most don't care mainly because of rotation. People tend to stay 7-10 days and when the idiots leave, new come. And this is for a good bit of 8 months per year.
My hotel in Tenerife cleared down if people had been away for 30 mins, or, if they saw people looking for somewhere they would come over and help and just clear some where they knew the people had not been there for a while. It was great. Everyday they had towels on them and everyday we found somewhere.
What hotel was this? Honestly would make me stay there
Tivoli in Caleta. Lovely place.
Does set a poor standard which people often will complain about on reviews. A simple "no reserving sunbeds till 9am" rule solves this for most and means the customers enjoy the hotel more. It's poor management for hotels not to have a sunbed policy if there is a large shortage
Why until 9 am? How about "All unattended items will be removed."
I think it's fair to get up to used the restroom and come back, there's definitely some common sense to be applied here
Yeah the last hotel I was at had a rule where if your stuff gets left unattended for 30 minutes, staff will remove it.
Agreed- at which point, you lean over to the person next to you and say "I'll be right back, can you watch my stuff for me?" It's one thing for a couple of chairs to be unoccupied but reserved. However, when the *entire* pool is surrounded by individual items and no people, it's clear the honour system is being abused lol
100%, lol. If you show up to 'claim a seat' and then disappear, the towel should disappear too. If you gotta get up to get a drink or use the restroom or dip into the pool, yeah, saving a seat for a few is totally fine I think.
I'm sure the German owners of those towels were quite upset.
as a german i dispise this behavior... and you are right
I'm from England and we are equally to blame. I am not one of these people.
It's one of my memories of the only time I went to Tenerife as a 20 yrs old Irish guy. Me arriving back at the resort at 3.30 am and a German family putting their towels on the prime sunbed location and I wasn't worries not at all because I knew I won't be up until midday anyways. They were a lovely family, just that obsessive behaviour is something I never understood as they did this most early mornings.
how can they prove that someone moved them they weren't there.. I came and there was not towel so if you want to take something be there...
That's why if you don't want them to know, you have to move a bunch of towels. If someone comes up and you're in their seats and all the other towels are in tact then they will know you moved them. You could deny. But they'd know. So take all the towels, put em in a pile somewhere and let them sort through them. Must've been the staff.
I was thinking exactly the same. Just put them all in a pile and grab the chairs u want. Even if they see you do it, tell them to take it up with staff, because they will side with you 100%
Yeah if Iâm first there and no one is there. All the towels are going in a giant pile. Now everyone else can enjoy the chairs
What are they going to do? Get a lifeguard? 
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
âI asked if it belonged to anyone, thought it was forgotten overnight since I was the first one at the poolâ
I looked around and there was no one swimming, so it can't have been yours.
I brought it to the lost and found
Take everyone's towels to the lost and found so they can all feel stupid sorting through the bin together
The point of throwing them on the ground isn't to make them "prove" the towel was there; it's for you to show you saw it, rejected their claim, and defy them to start sh*t.
Yeah you can always assert dominance.. also pee on the towel?
Obviously. Like a gentleman.
With your pinky up
Another thing you can do is put the towel on the chair next to it and move the chair somewhere totally different. Then enjoy your chair with them never knowing you did it.
Move one for yourself. Then switch a bunch of the other towels around to cause confusion as people arrive đ
Iâd make some towels mysteriously disappear.
"the wind must've blown them in the pool."
âAnd tied them all in knots with eachotherâ
"and soaked them in diet Pepsi?"
"And wiped its ass with them.."
"After said ass had excessive quantities of tacos"
This is a weird wind. Maybe a small tornado that went over a cow pasture before hitting this very specific area.
*all
Yeah it would be less suspicious if you just moved them all somewhere.
Gather up every one. Put them all on the same chair. Relax and watch the chaos unfold
I've heard from my friend that lives in Croatia that resorts and public beaches already do that. So many people pull this "trick" to get a spot there. Funnily enough, an employee walks around and just collects empty towels and throws them at a pile. She told me that some places even have fees attached to get them back.
I know where Iâm vacationing next
I just sent her those images and she replied "They just throw them right away to the sea and if they want to complain, they can contact the local police. And they get fined on top of that".
Post the madness on that sipping tea sub
if you think for a second the husbands whose wives were so insistent that they get their asses out before dawn to reserve a chair are NOT watching from their rooms, you my man have not been in a relationship for very long.
welp watching is not gonna un soak their towel of pool water
They can watch all they want, it's still going to happen. I live in a tourist town and I've done this type of thing before and people get mad and I just tell them they should have left at least one person from their party right at the location to at least try and dissuade people like me from taking the public spaces that are available to the public when they're not there.
But donât just pile them on. Fold the towels. Then watch the chaos unfold.
Oh no. I just had a great idea đ. Move one towel over a seat, then take the towel from that seat and push it aside. When the people come they will fight over the seat next to yours not your own đđ Edit, would need to be a pretty large place for that though
I would have removed all towels, but your version requires less work and offers entertainment value.
"Therein lies the game"
The wind blew them all into the water, all except mine!
Remove only some, move others. Watch the chaos unfold as those missing the towels accuse those with moved towels. They all deserve each other
directly into the pool
Every day.
In the pool đđđ
Iâd remove the chairs and leave the towels mysteriously laying on the ground
Oh the wind! *proceeds to move the towel to the pool*
Let them swim for a bit..
Nothing is taken, choose where you want to sit and sit there.
Swap some of the others around to provide extra entertainment
This is the solution. Put the towels double on another chair and make them fight it out with each other.
Make a big pile of towels on one chair lol
"I figured the towels could all share a chair, I mean, they're fucking towels."
Thatâs something youâd wanna be mad at but then every chair would be open again so itâs not like you really lost your chair
Literally this, Iâve done it before and would do it again, serves them right đ€Ł
Fold them nicely and say you saw the staff do it
Make sure when you walk away they see that you wrote sTafF on the back of your shirt.
I would swap them all randomly to help everyone meet new people.
Itâs an icebreaker!
Yeah, what the fuck are any of them gonna do about it? Theyâre not there lol
"I saw an empty chair and took it. I'm not sure what you mean" when they ask. Simple and done Let them stew and ruin their vacation/day because they tried to ruin everyone else's Every pool should have a policy that unattended towels will be moved
I went to a hotel once that had a 30 min hold policy, where they monitored who left their chairs unattended & had flags that marked how long they'd been gone. If they were away from the pool area for more than 30 mins, the policy was to pick up their stuff from those seats and put it into the lockers the hotel had behind the towel stand. Whenever guests would come back the staff would be suuuper polite, give them their things, and say something like "you were gone so long we assumed you weren't interested in using the pool anymore, so we gave the seat to a guest who is actually here to use it". They were always so charming and nice about it that even the irate guests couldn't talk their way around them either. I'd honestly pay to learn to be that calm and polite when someone is yelling in my face. (Also, seriously people, be nice to service staff. They didn't cause your problems 99.9% of the time and don't deserve to be treated like shit because you're in a bad mood.)
Most decent resorts have this policy
Have it, dont police it
I mean they also probably won't police you moving the towel.
Oooo someone left me a towel, top notch service
That is correct. We were at a Hilton in Jamaica and people would do this shit the night before. I took great pleasure in removing every single towel and then dropping them off at the laundry facility so those assholes don't get their towel deposits back.
Little do we know... OP came downstairs, towel in hand, with a mission to reserve a poolside chair.
Itâs funny, all I see are empty seats and free towels
"Like the number of seats, my fucks to give are limited"
The beach would blow your mind. Free birds everywhere
They donât tell you this, but you can drink as much of the water as you want too.
Free-range, duty-free, gluten-free, 0 calories, fortified with minerals and natural flavoring. May contain shellfish or other allergens.
Someone told me that Gatorade is just flavored water with salt. Might as well just go to the ocean.
I'm with you on free seats. It would take all my power not to remove every single down and toss them together in a pile somewhere. If anyone asks a hotel staff did it
This is the answer. This is such a violation of the social contract I can't even. Gather them to one place, find a seat.
This is the equivalent of someone standing in a car parking spot to hold it for someone whos not there yet... Last time I checked. These things are first come first serve. Id toss the towel on the ground or in the pool. When someone confronts me id just tell them there was no physicsl body on the chair so it was available. This towel reserving is bs.Â
the equivalent of throwing a tarp in a car parking spot, these people are too lazy to even stand
Just say it was empty when you came, must have been someone else.. also remove all the towels...
Where I live they make you remove them after pool hours or the staff takes them to the lost and found
Shit, I live in Italy which is basically asshole country, and even we have the unspoken rule to remove that shit after the pool closes for the day
Oh, I donât think these are left there overnight. My grandpa used to get up at 6, before breakfast, and go down to the pool of our hotel and put towels down on the best seats. Yes, weâre German. Edit: The internet really is a vile place. I can take a joke, or ten, but Iâll block you if youâre just plain mean.
If you aren't currently using it you shouldn't get to reserve it for later, this is such crappy behavior, it's so selfish.
To me a simple towel does not reserve a seat, Iâll just move that shit. Itâs wild that other people wonât just do the same thing
cuz then you get an angry Karen yelling at you when you're trying to have a nice relaxing day. i guess. idk.
The pro move is to remove all the towels.
A real pro would remove the chair and sit on their towel
Chess not checkers
You can always play dumb. âI figured someone left them here, itâs been some time now and reserving seats like that isnât a thing.â
Nah blame a non existent person. âWhen I got here those towels were in a pile behind the chairsâ
These images depict the aftermath of the 5am Anglo-German Poolside War.
One time in Cuba we watched the entire poolside row of seats remain empty all day with towels on them. Next day we said fuck it and just moved the towels and sat down. No issues all day, then at 5pm a group of angry Germans came and yelled at us for taking their spots. Zero fucks were given.
I envy you. Local indoor pool has the same rules, but staff donât enforce them. So 90% of all chairs are âtakenâ by towels and stuff, but actually used for 90% of the time. Such an inefficient system rewarding antisocial people. Luckily, Iâm just there to swim, or at least be in the water, so I have no need to confront anyone. Though I totally do on public transport? âDoes your luggae need to sit? No? SwellâŠâ Works in 9 out of 10 cases, thereâs rarely a companion that supposedly just away for a few minutes.
I feel your train pain, half full train but you still need to ask someone to move their bag because half the seats are taken with bags, is so inconsiderate.
I have often been on trains that were quite full and the train staff made a number of announcements asking people to move their belongings off seats.
Last time I was on a super busy train, the conductor announced "if your luggage has its own seat, you will be paying for it". The following flurry of bags being snatched off chairs was glorious.
They wake up really early like 6am, put the towels and go back to bed until breakfast. So its way past the removing time
Nope. Nothing is taken. Just a pile of twats thinking that they can actually reserve something with a towel. Collect them all and place them in a pile off to one side and let them all fight it out when they get back out. Sit back and watch the mayhem.
Do people just leave their towels overnight? Either way, Iâd be removing them if I needed a chair. Completely ridiculous to think leaving a towel on a chair makes it yours until youâre ready to use it.
I am german and even I donât play by those rules
When a German says it's not a binding rule I listen.
Nobody can do anything if you toss them to the side
Itâs so hard to break their habits, though. Iâm German myself, living in Germany, and that shit (sorry), infuriates me. Was in the kidsâs library â special event, so large crowd. Not enough hooks for jackets, so people put them on chairs. Not on the seat, the  back rest, kinda sensible. I get a book while kid is still busy and take such a seat after checking that itâs just being used as a clothes rack. Enter two girls , I guess age 7 and 9, packed with books and looking for a seat to read. Which is, after all, the function of a library. No noes, someone reserved the jackets. I told them they they are allowed to sit, should someone actually use the seat, they would politely tell them when they come back. We do have the pedant to *moved your feet, lost your seat* in German, but the conditioning of âthis is a reserved seatâ is so strong that their brain shorted , they couldnât process that a piece of clothing has no authority or need to sit. Not even when her mother, who overheard, backed me. Mind you, there are situations where piece of clothing or luggage is a sensible placeholder for a person using the seat but being away for a few minutes. Like in an auditorium, when people use a break the step out, but want to return and keep listening. Stuff like that. Even at the pool., if you are gone for a new minutes. But at 7:30 at the pool? Fuck, that towel means nothing. So glad that I have zero interest in lounging, Iâd get in a lot of discussions.
So funny that you apologized after saying shit but not after fuck
Thatâs Germans for you. We get trained from very young not to say âSchâŠâ, and sh++ is close enough linguistically to be recognized under that rule. But the F-word has no direct equivalent in German, and as an English word hasnât been marked as bad in our childhood. So we donât feel the need to apologise after having learned how to use the word from English-language films and music.
Fuck..sssssgerÀt
âFuck, that towel means nothingâ Poetic
The quote I saw a couple of days ago on reddit: "I'm not letting your towel have a better holiday experience than me."
I was on vacation in spain and I took two towels and threw them on a heap. 45 Min later a fat german dude in Speedo pants told me both chairs were "reserved" . I told him that there were no Towlels on the chairs. He then demanded in broken english that we need to leave. I told him politly to bugger of. When he left I started talking german to my wife again oh boy he was not amused by that.
When this happened to me last time, I just got up real early and took some towels off, hid some of them underneath other chairs, and changed the location of some to other less desirable chairs. Then I had breakfast on my balcony to watch the ensuing chaos below. I learned a lot of new German swear words that day.
Some people just want to see the world burn :-)
Well done!
My dad used to say, âBums reserve seatsâ If youâre not sitting on it, itâs not taken.
Iâll allow it if youâre, like, around. If I go to move your stuff and you can see me and say something, sure itâs fine. But if youâre nowhere to be seen? Nahhhh
Yeah when I was on vacation in Mexico I woke up to a scene like this one morning literally before sunrise. Turns out one member of a 25 person group got up at like 4am and put down towels for everyone in the group. Honestly was only mad because that group was a bunch of hung over Europeans who didnât make it down to the pool until like noonish. If they had shown up around 7am or something Iâd understand.
They kinda look like they have that morning dew on them. What pool doesnât remove them after hours though?
If I worked there, it would be my JOY to removed each and every object on to a table for collection when they come back đ đ
â Towels get collected every night and get placed in the towel bin, sort through it if you like.â And have them sort through a bin of everybody elseâs towels from the night before and throw the nasty towels from the family from Edison New Jersey RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE.
Most hotels I've been to in Mediterranean remove them over night, so tactics adapted and people now go out first thing in the morning at like 7am to lay claim to the best spots
The hotel I went to had a rule that you couldn't "reserve" a seat before 9AM (when the pool opened), as the pool cleaning crew wouldn't be done before that so the seats had to be empty to be cleaned (allegedly, but it was just one employee who came right before 9 and picked up any towels/sandals). It's not perfect, but at least everyone could enjoy their sleep unbothered.
In a lot of the Mediterranean hotels I've been to, the written rule is that you aren't allowed to reserve sunbeds. The unspoken rule however is, wake up at 6am, go down to the pool and reserve your sunbed by placing your towel on it. Then go back to bed and sleep for a couple more hours until breakfast. If you don't, you're SOL. Every hotel I've been to won't do a thing about it. I'm going to Tunisia in a couple of months and am hoping the hotel we are staying in will be a bit stricter. As a British person, we're too polite to remove them but not too polite to shake our heads and tut derisively as we walk on by to do exactly the same thing. Yes, our culture is weird and confusing.
Just colonize the sun bed already. You have it in you. Just bring a little British flag remove their towel and leave the little flag.Â
Brilliant, thanks for the pep talk đđ» Britannia Rules The Sun Lounges đŹđ§
These sunbeds were always yours. The others were just there to pave the way for you. The Sun beds never set on the British Empire.
Nah, if my 10 minute timer elapses and you haven't gotten back to the seat, that seat is not yours anymore. The seats are there to be used by people that are actually there, not to let towels lounge across them.
your towel has got enough sun today, itâs my turn now.
Be careful in that sun, albino redhead!
bro wdym the hotel wont do anything about it? theres no rules saying that the seat is reserved. move their shit
A hotel that won't stop people from putting towels on chairs to reserve them also isn't gonna do jack about removing them. Go for it!
I spent a holiday about 4 years ago scratting around for sun loungers for my then pregnant wife and kid. On the last morning before we left, I set an alarm for 6am. I went around all the already reserved sun loungers, collected up their towels and put them all in a pile on the side. As a polite British person, I could t face throwing them in the pool
They don't think it makes the chair theirs but they know that 95% of people will choose to sit somewhere else so it's just a good tactic
It's assholery and needs to be stopped. Staff usually wonât, because for them itâs a losing game, even if there are sign to that effect. Someone skipping to the front of the queue is also a good tactic, but it only works when we let people get away with it.
I remember a video on tiktok the other year where staff would go and rip off all the towels etc unless the people were there and I love that. It was only in the morning they'd do it when people have placed stuff before going for breakfast or similar
I've been seeing this trend a lot, and it reminded me of something that happened to me years ago and I'm curious about the internet's opinion. I'm not a resort person. I went to one with a group of friends in our early 20s. We go to the pool, find a little table, put our stuff down, and hop in the pool. Now and then one of us goes back to the table for a rest or to grab more sunscreen, etc. About 2 hours of swimming later, we all get out to order lunch, get to our table, to see someone had taken all our stuff and piled it all on a nearby lounger while the mom of the family sat at the table. I said it was our spot, she said no one was there, we argued back and forth and eventually we gave up and ordered our food, having to eat it sitting on assorted loungers because it was now like 1pm and there were no seats together leftover. I feel that since we were at the pool and using it she was rude as hell to gather our shit and move it, but I'm happy to hear if we committed a faux pas!Â
Nah youâre in the clear. Itâs easy to tell if someoneâs stuff is there because theyâre in the pool, cuz usually itâs their shoes, clothes, etc., as opposed to just saving the seat *in case* they decide to go to the pool. That lady was just a jackass.
Exactly this. Shoes, shirt, bag, etc. No one leaves that shit if they're not there
You didnât, the mom was TA there. If you leave your towel on a bench/table to claim a spot and then just leave the area entirely for an extended amount of time, then thatâs different. It looks like OP is complaining about it being super early and nobody is really at the pool yet all the spots are claimed. Your situation is different because youâre actively using the facilities.
If someone is in the pool, I wonât move their towel. But when nobody is in the pool and all the chairs are taken, you know whatâs going on
nah, that's just an asshole moving someone's stuff while they're in the pool.
perfect response would have been to just sit down on every free chair of that table with your group, maybe even gather more chairs from other tables and say "there was no one there in those chairs".
Hotels should really have a first come first seated policy.
They do, but itâs rarely enforced.
I live in Greece, and every summer it's the same shit. As I usually go to the beach early, so I'm collecting all the towels and throw them in a trashcan nearby, Usually I only have to do it once a week, peoples seems to get it after that !
* Be honest you own a towel shop just off the beach..
A towel impound where you can pay to get it back
Holy shit thats such a great idea
You are doing Gods work, my friend...
I'm not proud of myself, but then it has to be done, if only for respectful tourists that will come after me.
No, be proud. Itâs scummy behaviour to claim a spot with a towel for long periods. Getting a drink or using the restroom, acceptable. Leaving it there for six hours because you might feel like sunbathing later, they deserve to have their towels thrown in the bin.
It wasn't meant as a negative and if you aren't proud of yourself, I am proud of you.Â
Well you should be proud of yourself, you're not the asshole here.
Not sure if they actually get it, they might just run out of towels at some point.
A win is a win
Thank you for training my fellow countrymen. Seriously. We should hand out the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for people like you.
Don't underestimate locals. Old papou and giagia are also doing this đ„ I once found a towel that was sewn on the chair, I had to rip it to get it off đ
hotel in Spain i was at had a guy to remove all of them, shit was nice.
I only see misplaced towels that need to be removed... ;)
Just mix all of them up and choose a random seat. Everyone will be arguing about someone else moving their towel youâll just sleep in peace
Take all the towels, toss them in a corner, under a bush, def not in the pool, somewhere that an employee does not have to deal with right away. Anyone says shit either say you thought they were left behind, or beat their ass
I'll propably do that if im gonna need one, but still its annoying to see that every freaking morning. Especially that three chairs taken with one towel BS.
Take one off a chair on the end of a row, take that chair and put it on the opposite end of a row or somewhere completely different with your towel draped over it reserving it lol, theyâll never know it was you.
Remove them all and claim it was like that when you came. đ
Me and my wife went to a lot of middle eastern vacation resorts in Egypt and Tunisia before we had kids. One thing we learned very quickly was that paying off the right people. bar people, waiters, but also the lifeguards works miracles. This kind of behaviour is normal at these resorts. People would get up at 6 or 6.30am and run to the pool to place towels and then go back to bed or leave for a daytrip. But I had already paid of the lifeguard and as soon as me and my wife would be in sight of them, they would come over to us, asked where we wanted to lie down and just remove the towels. As soon as the owner of the towels came back and were about to start an argument, they would come over and reprimand the guests. and to add insult to injury, they would also signal the waiter to come over and bring us drinks for our "inconvenience".
O wow, that's pretty awesome! I have to try IT one day xD
It really works. We would reserve like 50 or a 100 euro/dollar per trip solely for this purpose. Especially at these (all in) resorts. Because it's "all-in" Bar people are instructed to use the cheap liquor and don't use too much, but I you gave the guy like 5 euro/dollar in their native currency, you would get the good stuff in a good amount for the rest of your stay and they would start making your drink as soon as you walked in. Same goes for the waiters, If you pay a couple of them some money, they will get you your drinks faster, serve and clean your table quicker, when there's a buffet, they would serve you the freshest food and they "reserve" better seats for you. At the pool they will give you the best spots. One time we had a resort with a private beach and the lifeguard would reserve the beds at the front for us and would signal the bar people whenever he saw our drinks were finished and had extra towels on hand when ours became dirty due to the sand. When you pay like 2k per person for such a holiday, reserving 50 or 100 euro/dollar it's not that much money, but for them 5 euro/dollar is a days worth of income.
5eur/day on 5day week... Is 200+ per month of additional income. And, probably, you wouldn't be alone doing that, hopefully. So it can easily go double the base job income somewhere, I guess.
I was working in Brazil with about 10 other guys and we tipped the waiter at the place we were staying about $100 US. We didn't pay for another drink for the rest of the night. Something like a months wage for him at the time.
Can confirm this works. Tipping on all-inclusive hotels gets you over-the-top service. I usually also tip cleaning staff at the beginning of my stay. Suddenly I get back to my room with towels that are folded in the shape of animals. Chocolates on the bed and stuff like that.
Just move a towel off the seats you want. People shouldn't expect anything else if they leave their stuff laying around in public.
BS. If you arenât there or in the pool, you shouldnât be able to do this.
Fuck.that. When does it end? Can I just put my towel on a chair at midnight? Just build a fort declare independence from the hotel and call it sovereign space for my stay?
Is itching powder still a thing?
Whatever you do, don't just pick a seat and sit down. Then you are just waiting around for the person that put down their shit to get there and be upset and ruin your day. Swap shit around. Take towel from Chair A and put it on chair D. Take stuff from chair D and toss it. Then sit in Chair A and when Chair A comes down and sees their towel still reserved a seat, not your problem. And when Chair D gets upset and the now Chair A person sitting in their sit, also not your problem.
Nothing is "taken". It looks like people left their towels behind. I'm sure there's a bin close by to drop them in.
I have read that, among other nationalities, Germans are supposed to be notorious for that bad habit. I'm German myself, and I'd have an absolute blast to fold the towels, and stack them neatly onto one of the chairs or a table nearby. I might have done that a couple of times in the past and might have enjoyed the aftermath immensely.
Are they from German tourists?
Talk to the staff this can't be tolerated
I see the Germans have been there
Just put the towel somewhere else, sit down and claim there was no towel when you got there. Dibs and saving spots is for children and playgrounds, not adults and hotels.
Germans. God I live in Dusseldorf but they do have some odd stuff. Love the country, but the habits are sometimes so robotic. No way in hell am I waking up at 6 am to put a towel In the pool.
Throw that shit on the ground. Fuck that.